American Casino (2009)
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Directed by Leslie Cockburn
Genres - Business, Culture & Society | Sub-Genres - Finance & Investing, Social Issues | Release Date - Sep 2, 2009 (USA - Limited) | Run Time - 89 min. | Countries - United States | MPAA Rating - NR
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Television documentarian Leslie Cockburn makes her feature debut with American Casino, a documentary that examines the causes and repercussions of the American financial collapse of the late 2000s. Cockburn interviews bankers and former bankers about their roles and what they observed. The roots of the collapse are traced back to the December 2000 passage of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, a deregulation bill proposed by then-senator Phil Gramm. The film details how the passage of that bill allowed financial institutions like Bear Stearns to make billions by repackaging mortgages into 'esoteric products' like CDOs. In addition to looking at how these complex moneymaking schemes crippled the financial and insurance industries, Cockburn takes a hard look at the devastating impact of the mortgage crisis in both inner-city Baltimore and Stockton, CA. The film points out that African-Americans were four times as likely to obtain a subprime mortgage as whites, suggesting that they were specifically targeted by predatory lenders. Cockburn shows the devastation wreaked on individual lives and the community by evictions and bankruptcies. She also explores the environmental impact the crisis has had on upper-middle-class Stockton, where abandoned swimming pools have become a breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents, and where abandoned homes are broken into and converted into meth labs. American Casino had its world premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, where it was shown in the Discovery section.
Cons and Scams | Conspiracies | Down on Their Luck
crime, economic-problems, financial-crisis, foreclosure, poverty
Deconstructing the boom and bust
Baltimore schoolteacher Denzel Mitchell in his foreclosed home in “American Casino.’’(Argot Pictures via The New York Times
)
By Mark Feeney Globe Staff / November 4, 2009 )
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The first name of a famous director named “Michael’’ comes to mind during the opening of “American Casino,’’ a documentary about the causes and consequences of last fall’s financial meltdown. But it’s Michael Mann, not Michael Moore. That’s how sleek and efficient Leslie Cockburn’s film starts out, with its shots of big office buildings, financial figures scrolling along computer screens, and talking heads. It’s a relief to see a minimum of huffing and puffing on such a hot-button subject.
How to be a high roller. The tone heats up over the course of the next hour or so. By then the soundtrack has Bruce Springsteen singing Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home.’’ Also by then we’ve seen how Wall Street recklessness has affected several people in Baltimore who’ve lost their homes or are on the verge of foreclosure. Heavy-handedness doesn’t seem quite so heavy-handed.
Cockburn, who wrote “American Casino’’ with her husband and frequent collaborator, Andrew, is an award-winning veteran of such television news programs as “Frontline’’ and “60 Minutes.’’ Much of the final two-thirds of the documentary can have a TV newsmagazine feel: solidly presented, but not shaped to a larger end. As self-righteousness sets in, however justified, so does a certain artistic slackness.
The documentary’s title is meant quite literally. “American Casino’’ is not just a metaphor - and it’s certainly not hyperbole. The various techniques that banks and mortgage firms employed would get a three-card monte dealer hauled in by the cops - except that three-card monte dealers don’t wear expensive suits or use terms like “credit default swaps.’’
“American Casino’’ includes news footage of Alan Greenspan being grilled by Congress and former US Senator Phil Gramm making his comment about America as “a nation of whiners.’’ But most of the movie consists either of interviews or on-the-street reporting. The talking heads include former financial executives, former government regulators, and financial journalists. None is famous, but that makes it easier to attend to what each is saying. Vegas world play online casino games. Celebrity doesn’t get in the way of the outrageous practices being described.
A particularly compelling interviewee is Washington, D.C., civil rights lawyer John Relman, who discusses the practice of reverse red-lining minority neighborhoods. That is, banks and mortgage companies would target such areas to push mortgages.
The effects of that targeting are shown through the experience of several individuals. Casino online spielen. A schoolteacher walks us through his foreclosed home. A minister who’s been reduced to living in a friend’s car says, “I just took it on faith it was going to be OK.’’ We watch a city housing inspector oversee the boarding up of a house.
The documentary concludes in California, with visits to Stockton and Riverside County, outside Los Angeles. In a gruesomely effective touch, we see pesticide workers deal with an increasingly common public-health hazard: a fetid swimming pool at a foreclosed house. Unlike the idea of Wall Street as casino, that is a metaphor.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
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AMERICAN CASINO Directed by: Leslie Cockburn
Written by: Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn
Best American Online Casino
At: Brattle Theatre
Running time: 89 minutes
Unrated
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